Interesting, as always. And...

> we come to accept more and more as everyday technology which we might have considered a distant, magical AI decades ago.

Ditto.

“We are not scanning all those books to be read by people ... We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”

Which just means that they don't want you to read a book from a computer screen, but to find it in the library because Google's AI figured it might be relevant to you and tells you where to find it.

Google's goal is to algorithmically help you getting information, not to create it.

Hey thanks for posting about my writeup. I take the view that their intention is ultimately "AGI", with neural implants that has 'google hooked directlly into our brains'. These are their words. Nothing is overnight, of course, but the intention is there and a piece I'm near releasing will better define how they're poised to pull it off. This don't mean that such is physically possible, and if it is how soon, but the policy is there and the infrastructure is too. Stay tuned...

It seems to me that pointing an AI at Google Code Search would be more fruitful (in the short term at least) than Book Search. I mean, I always just kind of assumed it was sandboxing millions of random unit tests on everything it touched and that someday soon it would learn to program in it's own highly optimized & completely incomprehensible vernacular.

Oh my God. I get it now. It's actually Google who will build Skynet.

If google did create a system that became self aware, would it stop me looking at porn because it considered it inappropriate, or would it encourage it in normal searches? Also what if it took it's own political/religious views which differed from mine and therefore edited my searches to coincide with it's own views? Forget the AI, just bring us the google OS*cloud...